If you want to be guaranteed loads of clicks in this town, write about how everyone is being driven out by high real-estate prices (caused by heartless politicians, shadowy foreign investors, the real-estate cartel, etc etc) and/or about a study that tries to bring real data to the anecdotes. So this recent study from UBC got […]

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Vancouver’s impending empty-homes tax — the first in the country — is prompting a lot of angst as owners facing bills of $4,000 to $100,000 a year decide what to do. You urban-life keeners will remember that most of the units identified as empty are condos. The city’s electrical study identified 10,800 homes in the […]

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Media got a snap invite yesterday morning to attend a “technical briefing” about the viaducts. It turned out to be not so technical, as there were still quite a few details missing (no answers to: when will exactly the park be built, are there hard targets for affordable housing, how much extra density will Concord […]

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This just out from Vancouver. I guess they are not that impressed by this argument published in the New York Times recently, saying recycling is mostly inefficient. Oh well, more opportunities for me to feel virtuous, aside from peeling the labels off my cans and putting cans in one place, labels in another. The City’s […]

Hoo boy, the Holy War between Vancouver and CPR heated up again Friday when the city launched a lawsuit claiming CP has effectively given up its right to use the Arbutus corridor as a rail line. I’m attaching the city’s statement of claim below so all the legal scholars on the blog can weigh the […]

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That was one fact that emerged from the presentation by general manager of planning Brian Jackson yesterday, in advance of today’s council vote supporting new policies that are an attempt to slow down the demolitions. More details in Jackson’s Power Point here and my story here. By the way, I popped over the the inquiries […]

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The recent news that much of the traffic congestion in Vancouver is caused by people circling the streets for a parking spot is a familiar story. Searching for a home for one’s car several times a day is more of a fraught experience in many people’s minds than searching for a home for oneself. In […]

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It really takes a full-time national reporter to stay on top of the bike-share thing, with all the various news events. Among them in the past month: – Montreal got four offers for the international arm of Bixi recently, but decided none were good enough. – The City of Montreal will provide enough money ($4.3 […]

I’ve been wanting to do a feature for 20 years on this strange chunk of the city known as the Tea Swamp, ever since I first started the city beat. Sadly, I missed the opportunity to photograph and write about the crazy house (on Prince Edward, on the north side of the lane between 16th […]